1) Make your coffee2) Use 1 large swirled spoon of malt extract as your sweetener instead of sugar (artificial sweeteners are toxic)3) Add milk to taste

The malt extract will give you a super-boost. Seriously. It's mind-blowing just how wild it is. It does have a flavour (a very nice one at that!), but you can decide to love it and the uber-rush you get (it lasts - it's not a short buzz - it's lasting, real energy provided by vitamins & nutrients).

Also... the malt extract will seriously help destroy/mitigate any hangover you have.

Hmm... Not many people sharing recipes lately... Guess I'll need to kickstart this thread again... with BOOZE~!

Renegade's Alcoholic Ginger Ale!

Brewing booze at home is dirt simple. Here's a recipe for alcoholic ginger ale that you can experiment with, and that uses no special ingredients or equipment beyond what you probably already have at home.

Ingredients:

Ginger - 50 g per litre of water for a strong flavour - reduce to about 15 g per litre of water for a mild ginger flavour

Flip-top bottles - e.g. Grolsch bottles, or in a pinch you can use regular plastic soda bottles

Yeast - you can use plain old baker's yeast, though specialised yeasts like champagne yeast will work better

Sugar - Lots. 50~100 g per litre of water to start. More later... Try to use caster sugar (icing sugar) if you can, but this isn't crucial.

Lemon juice - 1 lemon per 5 L is fine

Cheesecloth - you can use a regular J-cloth as well if you don't have any cheesecloth or muslin, though it's probably a good idea to boil that first

Filtered water - However much end product you want to have, use that much water

Step 1 - Ginger slurry (or chop)

Put your ginger into a food processor and liquify it. Add in some water to help. This will depend on your food processor.

If you don't have a food processor, just chop it up finely.

The finer the ginger, the stronger the flavour. So, you can use less ginger and create a slurry, or use more ginger and just chop it. Given the high prices of ginger here, I create a slurry. Again, adjust the amount of ginger for your own tastes. 50 g per litre of water in a slurry is extremely strong.

Step 2 - Syrup

Put your ginger slurry into a pot & add the lemon juice, some water and sugar (see above for ratios). Use all the sugar, but don't add all the water. You only need enough water to dissolve the sugar. Heat the pot hot enough to dissolve the sugar. It doesn't need to boil, and it's better if you don't boil the ginger.

When the sugar has dissolved, remove it from the heat and allow it to cool to room temperature (IMPORTANT). You can add cool water to hasten this, but some sugar may precipitate - not a big deal, but it's better to have it dissolved.

Step 3 - Strain the syrup

Strain the syrup into a large container/bowl. Use cheesecloth or something fine to get out as much of the particulate ginger as possible. You will still have some cloudiness though, which is fine. You may need to strain it more than once if you have a slurry. (Your tolerance for sediment is what's important here.)

Step 4 - Add yeast

Add water to your syrup to make sure it is room temperature. Add 1 teaspoon of yeast per litre of water. (How much water you add here isn't very important - add as much as the container will hold.) Stir the mixture.

Step 5 - First bottling step

Pour what you have into bottles equally. e.g. Pour until all your bottles are equally x% full. Top off the bottles with water, but make sure to leave a good amount of room at the top! 75% full is fine if you're planning on making it strong & going through step 6 more than 2x. Do NOT fill the bottles - they will explode.

Cover the tops of the bottles with cheesecloth (or anything similar) and leave it for a day...

Step 6 - Groundhog day step

This step you can repeat a few times. Twice is good, but you can do it 5x if you like. This is where you'll be creating more alcohol.

Add between a teaspoon and a tablespoon of sugar to each bottle (a teaspoon is fine). Cap the bottle and turn it over a few times to let the sugar dissolve. Uncap the bottle & replace the cheesecloth on top. You can add a tiny bit more yeast if you want to experiment, but this isn't necessary.

Step 7 - Cap it

Add a teaspoon of sugar (not a tablespoon) or less. This will be consumed and create carbonation in your ginger ale.

Cap the bottle and leave it for 2~5 days in a safe place in case it explodes. Do not refrigerate it yet. This is where you'll get the fizz.

Step 8 - Fridge time!

Put it in the fridge until you're ready to drink.

When drinking, add in some sugar or sugar syrup to sweeten it as the ginger ale will be very dry.

The quality of what you'll get above is going to vary, but the recipe above requires no special ingredients and everything can be obtained in any grocery store.

Dude... You are missing out. The stuff you get in the store is NOTHING like what you can do.

The recipe I posted above is kind of lame. It's very basic and really only for you to have fun. It can be improved upon a LOT. However, it's not so much about the taste as about the adventure. The above recipe can be tweaked easily to come up with a very nice ginger ale. Sub in a champagne yeast, etc., and you'll end up with some real beauty.

Lately we've been enjoying something a friend introduced us to which she referred to as "how grown-ups eat watermelon."

1. Cube a medium sized seedless watermelon. Cubes should be about 1/2" - 3/4" square (i.e. big enough to be speared and stay on a fork.)

2. Put cubes in a large plastic salad bowl, sprinkle a generous handful of chopped fresh basil over the melon cubes, and (optional*) add about 2 cups of grape tomatoes (cut in half) to the mix.

3. Pour "a moderate quantity" (1/2 - 3/4 cup approx. and adjust to taste) of your favorite balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing* over all and mix gently so that everything is more or less evenly distributed.

4. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour or two to let the flavors blend. (Especially good when left overnight.)

5. Remove from fridge, gently mix again and allow to warm up a bit. Salad should be served cool - but not too cold - for best flavor.

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Notes:

DonationCoder Recipe Sharing Thread

1. We've tried a few different readily available vinaigrettes and think Cardini's Light Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing works best. At least so far. (No MSG and low fat to boot!)

2. My GF likes the contrast of texture and flavors the watermelon/tomato combination provides. I find it distracting. Fortunately, the tomato flavor doesn't invade the watermelon all that much, so I just pick around them when I'm filling my dish. This is a win-win since I don't care for tomatoes in this particular dish - and my not taking any leaves more for my GF, who really does enjoy having them in there.

3. Since we started doing it up this way, my GF and I have probably eaten more watermelon in the last few weeks than we have in the last 10 years.

2. My GF likes the contrast of texture and flavors the watermelon/tomato combination provides. I find it distracting. Fortunately, the tomato flavor doesn't invade the watermelon all that much, so I just pick around them when I'm filling my dish. This is a win-win since I don't care for tomatoes in this particular dish - and my not taking any leaves more for my GF, who really does enjoy having them in there.

My alt version will skip the tomato and onion, and I haven't decided on the bread but it might just be one of the healthy breads and (even since I don't need it yet but an experiment) one of the diabetic breads.

# add one spoonful of pesto to two large, or three medium, eggs per person (I havent tried this with large amounts of eggs, you may need to add less pesto).# whisk.# fry at low temperature, ideally with a good olive oil. When it's nicely set towards the sides, you could stick it under the grill for a minute or two to get the middle to set - then flip it, and give it another minute or two in the pan.

The intensity of the pesto makes for a really tasty omelette.You can make a meal of this by adding cubed (cooked) potatoes and chopped (cooked) green beans.

An omelette with two or three eggs works well in my 18cm pan -- that's 7&1/8 inches (the base is about 13.5cm).For two people, I prefer to make two small ones - but best experiment with your frying pan/s.

I have a couple of lovely carbon steel frying pans - that's iron that rusts, and *not* cast-iron. You can get them dirt cheap here (amazon.de), but the equivalent seems to be difficult to find on amazon.comGreat for omelettes, fried spuds, etc.